Ron Conners: Remember the Mad Dogs
by Mulletmanalive
Summary: Ron and the Gang have found disturbing truths about Kim's family line and must work to preserve them, while solving historic problems for Middleton. Think the action of Terminator, jokes of Back to the Future and feel good factor of Remember the Titans
1. Arrival

I do not own the characters or situations within this story that directly tie to Disney's Kim Possible products including televisual presentations, movies or comic books.

In a similar vein, I do not own the characters or personalities of the 1971 Alexandria Virginia Titans football team who are lovingly reproduced in a style more fitting with the plot and other characters based on the film Remember the Titans. Certainly no offence is meant by any of the characterisations as this is one of my favourite movies.

I draw no profit from their use and use them under the tribute/parody sections of Copyright law.

The characters of Immortal, Arahat, Dreamer, Saint, Prophet, Watcher, Pagan, Shaman and the Spirit Britannic, along with the Lost Paragon are characters from my Living Saint stories and I hold ownership of such.

* * *

The light from the transition fades slowly around me, revealing the intense glory that is my crouching naked form to the world. Nah, I'm just messing with you. I look as wiry and scarred as ever, clutching myself together in a crouch on one knee, arms closed in to protect my genitals from the bitter cold winds that accompany temporal shifts.

I haven't decided whether I think that the winds are a natural part of time shifting or whether they are there because Wade's designs were made to take them into account. He's seen so many movies where a time travel experience is accompanied by violent winds that I'm sure it seems like the most natural assumption in the world.

Well, my testicles don't want to know about any natural assumptions right now.

The wind has dies down and the warm summer air is beginning to nurse a little life back into the old boys. Slowly and with more clicks than I'd prefer, I rise to standing and look around me.

True to terminator form, I've materialised between two structures; in this case big wooden buildings with storage inside, and annihilated everything that was within the nine foot sphere that I was the centre of. Peering into the unlit rooms on either side, I can see where shelves have slipped out of reality because of the personal shift matrix. Large semicircles are missing from these racks and much of their contents went with them. Half obliterated cans of beans and oil allow their viscous fillings to cascade out onto the floor, pouring in slow motion unlike the water which dropped the instant the field dissipated.

Continuing looking around, I try and find some evidence of where I am. The upper left corner of one of these wooden prefabricated shacks has the words 'BLACK – 156' printed on it in big stencilled letters that you'd have to be an idiot not to recognise.

I'm just about to call for Wade when I hear a voice behind me.

"Holy Fck! Commie's we've got a Fcking naked commie in the stores!"

I wheel around to catch sight of a shocked looking man in loose olive fatigues and a forage cap looking off to the side with a look of desperation and imploring gestures.

Another soldier runs into view, throwing an M16A1 assault rifle into the hands of the first and bringing a second up to his own shoulder, checking the load.

"Freeze you Fcking Commie Fck!" the first screams rather louder than absolutely necessary, training his rifle on me. I begin to raise my hands as my ears catch the horrible sound of the firing pin catching the edge of the casing.

Reflexively my psychic egg establishes itself and the first smattering of bullets begin to hammer against it, the force being translated into mental impacts that shock me a little each time they bear down, like a tiny brain freeze with each blow.

"Wade!" I bellow, as if that would make the trans-temporal communication work any faster. Within moments, Wade materialises wearing the same rediculous white suit he always wears when he uses the neural projector.

"What's the matter Ron?" he asks, momentarily oblivious to the bullets passing through his form.

"Wade, what's the exact time, date and location that I'm occupying at the moment?"

He pauses for a second to tap at Ziggy before replying.

"August nineteenth, nineteen sixty four, three oh seven AM. You're in the middle of Paxton Air-force base, the storage section."

"Why exactly am I in the middle of a military base?"

"We thought that you could steal a uniform and pretend to be a GI returning from Vietnam."

"Wade, that is so much use given that you didn't tell me. I thought I was going to be in a lay-by about fifty miles form civilisation and mug someone at a roadhouse."

"Oh, well, I thought Damien told you," he replies, apparently having an argument with someone that's not inside the projector.

"Ok Wade, no time to start trying to place blame," I say, struggling under the weight of fire. Knowing that I've got to get this back under my control before my egg collapses, I begin to unspool the Lotus from its subcutaneous hiding place and throwing numerous of the rods out to catch some of the bullets. Now, rather than scattering off me like they were hitting steel, the bullets are stopping as if they were hitting water, each one ballooning against the tiny point pressure that the rod imparts on it.

"I just need to know if there's any cover up material relating to anything around this date. Alien conspiracy, Communist supermen, that sort of thing."

I curse briefly as I hear the unmistakable sound of a tank rolling across concrete and chance glancing away from the ever increasing number of troopers firing M16s at me to see an Abrams tank rolling into view. Why can't this stuff ever be easy? Why?

"Well Ron, there is a lot of record in the military about some kind of incursion by a prototype Soviet weapon of some type. You don't think? Oh hell."

"Yeah Wade, I'm a little busy trying to not die and not kill anyone and mess up the timeline so give me a figure on property damage and I'll try and keep the casualties to a minimum, though I guess that they're already accounted for in the timeline."

Before he can reply, a heavy report that goes beyond sound its wavelength is so great hammers out from the tank and there's a shell heading for me. The tank commander's an idiot. Even if he kills me he's likely to harm just as many of his own or more likely, far more.

I fling my hands up, cupping the shell with my gesture. Instantly a grey mist of steel congeals from the air, wrapping the deadly explosive projectile in a sphere of steel. I lock the atoms of the shell in place, effectively reducing the sphere to absolute zero and feel the violence of the detonation through my connection to the Lotus. Blinding white light shines through the seemingly opaque casing as the energy of the detonation contacts utterly immovable resistance and transforms into the only state that it can in order to escape.

The shooting stops for the briefest of moments as the soldiers shield their eyes or stand mesmerised by the intensity.

"Gonna clue me in or stand looking at the shiny?" I demand of the befuddled Wade as I leap out of my emergence crater and start whipping the Lotus around, knocking men down and shredding weapons.

"There were thirty five casualties and nine AFVs were destroyed in the fighting. There was quite a lot of property damage as well."

"So I get to have some fun?"

"I guess so. Try not to hurt too many people but you've got to make this conveniently Communist. The government historically used this as a reason to develop their own super soldiers."

"You mean that I'm the reason that the Middleton enhancement project began?" I ask, suddenly feeling a little sick to my stomach.

"Yep. Sorry dude, you're the reason you were a sidekick so long."

"This just gets better and better," I mumble, kicking a tall man gently in the head. He flies across the parade ground, striking a machinegun team and sending them sprawling. I punctuate the point by dismantling the weapon itself with Lotus darts.

"You'll never get to the lab you Commie mutant freak!" howls a heroic voice from behind me as a bayonet shatters against my egg and another thrusts a little to my left. I shrug my shoulders with enough explosive force to pitch the two men from their feet and proceed into a trio of arching spin kicks, testicles flying.

"Wade, I need to know what would be in this lab and if history wants me to make sure that US research is set back a great many years. Actually, more to the point, is it anything that we could use?"

"Hang on Ron, I'm checking," he replies as I whip a man round, dislocate his arm and turn my face up to the newly starting rain to cry "Medic!"

"RON! Believe it or not, this is the prototype for the Middleton enhancement project. According to the schedule, they're due to begin the abductions within a few weeks."

"So I have to kick the crap out of this supersoldier lab then," I reply, joining the dots.

"If you want them to delay until Lynn is in the second trimester, yes."

"Joy," I say, rising from the ground on a mild gust of wind and sending a pair of great metaphorical slashes sailing through the crowded soldiers, scattering them like ragdolls.

A cordon of tanks has formed around one of the buildings. Could they make it any more obvious which building has the dangerous research in it?

Sending gusts of grey mist forward, I let my eyes glow with the intensity that I've come to expect from this sort of shizzle and I scoop up the two nearest tanks with great arms of telekinetically controlled metal. In a simple sweeping gesture with both of these arms, I smash the tanks together to flatten them and crack the surface.

The rods begin to infiltrate the flattened panels, cutting and distorting them into great fists of iron and then like a titan of old, I claw and tear through the fabric of the great concrete bunker, hurling shards and great lumps aside like a child trying to find the missing toy in the sandbox.

Men around me scream as the building parts and I bury the other tanks or use them to crack the building like an otter uses a rock to break a seashell. I shake a quintet of hairs loose and chant the incantation of multiplication. Five copies of me spring into existence, each a small fragment of my personality made flesh.

"Burn everything but make sure most of the scientists escape. If we completely sink this project then Kim Possible will just be a regular girl and not the eidetic reflex packing mutant she was in our timeline. You," I say, turning to Passion, "no collateral pregnancies and no sadism. Se need to make this look like it was done by professional Soviet agents. Alright boys, Russian accents on!"

I turn back to the oncoming hoard of troops, pausing only to throw the shattered wreck of one of the tanks at the incoming gunship helicopter.

* * *

I dash down the first corridor, issuing orders for the others to spread out down specific corridors until I'm dancing along ceilings alone, dodging bullets and happily causing the majority of tonight's casualties. Three guards are bisected by a swift blow from the Lotus and I smash my way through the door with a variation on the Quivering Palm. It's nice to be able to live up to idiots' ideas of what the quivering palm should be like, causing the heavy steel door to explode into a fine cloud of splinters.

"Who are you? What do you want?" asks the brave but obviously terrified female scientist at the front of the cowering pack.

"I'm here to close you down for Mother Russia," I reply with a happy gusto and then proceed to start making gestures with the correct angle and force to cause combustion where the blows touch. I turn to leave once a few vials of flammable liquid have exploded.

"You'll never get away with this, base security will not let you escape!" she calls after me.

"I'd be more worried about whether you can get away that about me," I reply and then begin to bound off down the corridor with the odd feeling of having my genitals flapping. I need to steal some pants.

Luckily, I find one of the guards I split in half and draw the blood out with a gesture. Not quite my size but at least they have a belt.

* * *

The duplicates are returning when I hear a howl in the distance.

"Wade?" I ask with fear creeping into my voice. That's an odd sensation, I can tell you; fear for myself in combat.

"The records are a little sketchy on this point, but I think they've deployed whatever super soldiers they've managed to brew up here thus far."

"I'm guessing that these things aren't friendly all American shield flingers?" I say trying to massage a little Captain America humour out of the situation. I fail, suffice to say.

"More like Wolverine with a nasty psychic aftertaste that makes you afraid, very afraid."

"Wonderful, though that does explain the morbid dread."

Within a few more minutes, they're upon me, each the size of a pro-wrestler, muscled like a badly drawn cartoon character or me in a muscle enhancer and mean looking. Each one has a horrible admixture of canine and feline attributes and a feral look that says quite clearly that they are here to eat, not keep the peace.

"Great," I mutter under my breath as the first leaps and I shift my stance to bring the Jian formed from the Lotus to bear. The thing's weight drives it home onto the blade, cleanly through where its right ventricle sits.

It's still moving. In fact, it's struggling rather more than I like my dead things to do so. Releasing the blade, I command it to draw its handle and points into the centre of the blade's length, forming a serrated uneven razor edged disc.

Still the beast struggles, much to my annoyance as I'm driven back by savage claw swipes from the second and lunges from the third. Last time I checked, even hugely resilient things can't live without a head. The Lotus forms into its gaseous form and surges up to its head where it bursts forth, bringing most of the thing's brain casing with it. Still the damn thing takes a dozen seconds to admit defeat.

The second slams into me as I make the gesture to draw the Lotus back to my hand; I knew I should have spent the time needed to refine that to be instinctive but no, I had to play Star Wars!

I spin across the floor and sprawl. I think I even lost consciousness for a second there. This is worrying, really worrying. I haven't fought anything like this before; these things are terrifyingly powerful. Or am I just weaker here?

Pulling my head out of the dry August soil, I feel blood and grit in equal mixture and reflexively reach to wipe it away as a huge furry beast descends on top of me. A scream of rage and desperation burns and boils its way up my throat as I shove an open palm towards it with all of my hurt and aggression channelled behind it.

There is a brief moment of stillness as the blow connects and then a crackling boom as the beast is hurled away into the sky, diminishing until it becomes nothing. I half expect to see a little wink of light but even if the thing made it into orbit that wouldn't actually happen.

The final beast hesitates for a moment at the sight of the second of its brethren being destroyed. I use that moment to call the Lotus and make a quick chopping gesture. The few remaining Lotus staves in the air congeal into a fine wire and sever the thing's head.

I shouldn't be here any more. I've got to get out of here. Gathering my remaining energies up, I hurl myself into the sky. They shouldn't be able to track me as I fly but, well, that isn't an issue as I crash to the ground only a mile or so outside the base perimeter.

I make a break across country, hoping that I won't get spotted before I can find something to wear other than a pair of ill fitting army greens and my tattoos.

* * *

Author's Note: For anyone who was hoping to see another update worth of What Ron's May Come, this is not a sign that i'm abandoning the project, just that i'm not really in the right mindset for being creative on that level with the imagery and what not. If anyone has any suggestions, as i said originally, please hand them over. 


	2. Preparation

Wade stood next to the flux capacitor unit and wondered whether he would have called it that if it weren't for Robert Zemeckis. This one wasn't a small device like the one in the film, though; it was the size of a middle sized washing machine so building it into a Delorian or anything with any style was right out. Not that it mattered.

At the far end of the garage stood the huge vehicle I had chosen for the "Delorian." A vintage 18-wheeler with chromed smoke stacks. As far as trucks went, even Wade was forced to admit, it was sex on legs.

"We nearly ready to fly, Wade?" asked a cool voice with a slight tint of a Hispanic accent. Wade looked down from the mostly dismantled truck engine and smiled at the leader of the resistance.

"Its been more than able to fly for over a week. It'll fly alright, I'm just not sure if I can get it to do what it was built to do."

"I was talking about the time travel…wait, you put flight systems into this thing?"

"Yeah, I wanted the full movie trilogy experience," Wade's gruff baritone echoed back.

"Don't you think that people are going to notice a giant truck flying around?"

"People happily ignore Ron flying around all the time. How often do you hear about a strange blond superhero in armour? Answer: never."

"Yes, but a human is far easier to dismiss as the mind playing tricks than a black articulated lorry!"

"You say pot-ay-to and I say pot-at-o," Wade replied as he strolled across the floor to the truck itself and climbed on to the fender.

"Look, all I'm saying is "guy-in-the-sky" is far easier to ignore than "whacking-great-black-oblong-in-the-sky."

"I understand what you're saying," Wade replied, leaning into the cockpit of the vessel, "Which is why I installed this," he flourished, throwing a switch. Nothing happened.

"What am I looking at here, Wade?"

"Gaddammit!" Wade cried and slapped his hand down on the bonnet of the truck. Something started turning inside and after a brief rippling, the whole truck and most of Wade vanished.

"Camouflage, nice," Damien said approvingly.

"Thought you'd like it," Wade muttered as Damien turned and walked away, leaving Wade unable to find the entrance to the now concealed cockpit to turn the field off. Until that happened, he was trapped up there.

* * *

"Damien, there you are," a sweet voice with a southern twang sounded up the hall towards him. Damien paused for a second before the gears in his brain decided to start working together and tell him who she was.

"Anne, what can I do for you?" he asked, having a sneaking suspicion what she was going to say.

"You can take me with you," she announced, holding her medicine case in front of her like a secret. There it is, though Damien, it was inevitable. She'd been asking this since the beginning of the project and I had kept saying no based on temporal paradox. She obviously thought Damien would be an easier mark.

"We've been through this before, Anne. Ron is the primary on this mission and he's already said "no" to you meeting your mother and perhaps doing something stupid like warning her that the military is going to kidnap her when she's pregnant to turn her baby into a genius and her grandkids into polymaths with eidetic reflexes."

"But you'll need a medic," she sputtered, looking desperate for a second, then her right arm collapsed down behind her, her lower lip protruded and big blue eyes were framed with a gently quivering lip.

"No Puppy Dog Pout is going to make me give in on this Anne, Ron taught me all of his tricks, including how he avoided giving into that on numerous occasions."

"Ron never…that sneaky son of a bitch! He figured it out? Damnit!"

"Sorry Anne, you've been firing blanks all this time. He figured out a thought so hideous that it could override the cute and used it every time Kim tried to use the pout on him from that point on. He just pretended to give in."

"What was it? I've got to know."

"Easy, tiger. After the turning into a monkey thing on photo-day, Ron learned to think of kissing Kim as a monkey (even if it was Chippy). That pretty much scuppered the pout right off. I mean, what's the point of the pout after Ron hit puberty other than reminding him of the heinous crime of upsetting a girl?" Damien finished this statement with a flourish and a grin that could have only been learned from the face of Ron Stoppable.

"You're getting rather too much like him," Anne said as she walked away annoyed.

"I'll take that as a compliment!" he yelled after her.

* * *

"What are you doing up there?" Lynn asked, wandering onto the hanger. Wade was still suspended in the air, stood on the spoilers of an invisible big rig, missing from the waist down and groping for something that he couldn't see. She stifled a giggle at the sight of his eyes rolled up and tongue out switching from one side to the other as he concentrated.

"Trying to find the control for the invisibility circuit. I can't see it to grab it."

"Didn't you build a remote?" she asked in a voice that made it sound like the most obvious thing in the universe.

"Yes I did, actually, miss Smartypants. It's just not here. It's in my lab and I'm up here where I can't see to climb down and I don't know which of the security features may have been activated.

"I'll go get it then!" she squealed with delight at the idea of entering Wade's lab and disappeared out of the door before Wade could stop her.

Wade cursed himself gently, knowing that she had no idea what the remote looked like, so he'd likely be up here for a while longer.

* * *

"Tim, you've got to convince them to let me go with you."

"Mum, that stuff didn't wash when we tried it with Kim, so it sure as hell isn't going to work when you're asking me to defy Ron-frigging-Stoppable."

"Ron isn't that scary, dear," she replied knowingly.

"You may have seen him naked but you haven't seen him angry. Let's leave it at that."

"Ron doesn't get angry dear," came his brisk response. He sighed and dropped his head in his hands before looking up from the workbench.

"Doesn't he? You weren't there when he obliterated an entire room full of synthetics because one of them had tried to mess with Bonnie. You weren't there during the really grim actions in China; you didn't see the bodies of women and children stacked to that they would block the paddies and make everything pickle. Even he couldn't keep from anger at that and he did a lot of damage."

"What's that got to do with this?"

"If you were to come back in time and change anything, interact with your mother, then you or Kim might never be born and we're in more of a pickle than we're in now. Sorry mum, it isn't happening."

"We'll see about that," she said before leaving the room without further ceremony. Tim sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. For the four hundred and sixth time that day, he wished that his brother was still on side.

* * *

Lynn was enjoying this. Wade's lab had always been something of a mystery, full of half built magic and wonder. Things that thought for themselves, things that flew, things that made you invisible or let you walk through things. She especially liked the magic hats.

In some ways, they weren't actually magical, but in some ways they were. Most of the systems were engineered by measuring what my brain did when I use magic and causing the same thing to happen in other people. They did some of the minor things that I can do like fly or make himself look like other people.

She wondered why I don't use my multiplying power more often. That was useful and there was always one of me looking over her in Britain. She kinda missed that.

She clattered around for many minutes, looking at the things placed at her head height on all of the workbenches and looking up at the shelves. Everything looked so cool and weird but that didn't help her find what she was looking for…

_What would daddy do?_ She thought to herself, pondering the whole thing for a while. Unfortunately, the answer was something along the lines of; _spread his mind through the whole area and see what has the most emotion directed at it at the moment_.

That wasn't a huge help.

Wait.

Ron didn't have powers, well, proper magical powers when he was her age but her mum always told her how he always managed to find the answer by accident.

_That's silly,_ she thought until another thought rose up unbidden, _it's not like you have a better idea, is it?_

Mildly shocked, she got out a stepladder and climbed up to see what was on some of the shelves. Unclear as to what everything was, she covered her eyes with one hand and started to eeny-meeny through them. Unfortunately, she hadn't a hand free to keep her on the ladder. It began to tilt.

She fell screaming onto one of the workbenches, crushing and scattering everything, all the while with her hand over her eyes.

She finally came to a halt.

Timidly, she opened her eyes to find two things she'd not really seen before. One was a clunky steel watch and the other was a strange brass shape that looked like a box with a tail and another tail opposite the first made of grey steel.

She happily snatched them both up and ran back to the hanger.

* * *

Wade was pretty sure that he had his arm inside the cockpit now. Just whether he could swing inside to find the control was another issue.

He was about to try when a red tornado appeared in the corner of his eye, screaming and giggling. The shock almost caused him to lose his footing.

"I think I've found it, Wade," she cried happily, producing the watch and gripping the bevel.

"No wai…" was all Wade managed to get out before she turned it.

The truck did indeed become visible. Unfortunately, it took that opportunity to begin transforming into a large black and partially incomplete war robot.

* * *

Author's note: The little thing that Lynn found is a device called a Cricket Snapper; they were issued in WW2 to members of the airborne and made a distinctive clicking noise when the iron tongue was depressed and released. They often found their way into the hands of children in the late 40's and 50's so they would be considered archaic but not surprising in the 60's. If you're wondering what one looks like, I suggest you Google it.

Sorry it took so long to get a chapter out. Depression and the difficulty of trying to write What Rons May Come had me somewhat avoiding writing for a while. If anyone has any suggestions about decent Fics to read to try and get my creative juices going again, I'm all ears.


	3. Pants

A fine plume of dust graces the still morning as I drop the last forty feet to the ground; tired and irritable, with wounds that are still stinging like hell. I hate the fact that people assume that just because I'm immune to most attacks means that I'm not feeling the hits. Despite a force field and iron hard flesh, I've got wounds that are going to take a while to heal, even if that is faster than for a normal person.

About a hundred yards away, just inside its pool of light is a bar, apparently called Doudie's. I'm guessing that it isn't there in my time, though I rarely came out this way so it might have been; I was usually more interested in the fact that Dr Bortel never seemed able to invest in some decent security.

Clothing is the first priority at the moment, I suppose.

Walking in, I notice that there are at least two dozen Harley Davidson motorbikes stood in a line outside the place's large porch. Hell's Angels. I grin openly at the fact that I get to be a part of movie history.

I step up onto the porch and move slowly over to the doorway, blocked as it is by a saloon style swing door. A hand on each panel, I step through and stand in the newfound gloom of the interior, silhouetted by the brighter lights of the porch.

The dull murmur of talking continues for a moment, then all of a sudden it terminates, leaving only the rock and roll music playing, which itself stopped seconds later with that screeching noise that you hear in movies from this period. I step into the room properly, numerous big men, the owners of the bikes and selection of pickup trucks outside, eyeing me up.

They obviously don't like what they see; my bare, narrow chest, scarred face and mismatched eyes and a massive black pattern tattoo covering my right arm, shoulder and much of my chest, even breaking onto my neck. I guess they don't see many people like me.

A large man detaches himself from a knot near the bar, stopping about three feet from me; a well judged swinging distance for his height.

"I'm afraid you've taken a wrong turn somewhere, son. We don't like your kind in here."

I look up at him, shifting some of my chi away from healing wounds and using it to make myself loom a little.

"And what 'kind' is my kind, exactly?" I ask, my voice as cold as I can make it.

"We don't like faggots in here" he replies, obviously struggling as his fear of me personally battling with what he assumes I represent.

I turn my attention to the room, looking for someone of about my size. I find one, a brown haired fellow with a cowboy hat. Ignoring the hand put out to stop me as a freight train ignores grass, I walk over his perch at the bar.

"I need your clothes, your boots, that snappy hat and your truck," I pound out in the deepest monotone I can muster.

"Boy, you must be stone cold out of your queer mind to think that I'll do that!" he replies with a slight squawk in his voice.

In that instant, I feel a slight gust of air behind me and unbidden, my arm blurs out and catches the approaching pool cue dead.

"I'm guessing that none of you have the sense to know when you can't win a fight," I sigh without turning. The distinctive click of a flick-knife being deployed cuts through the air, then another, then another. "That's my answer, I suppose."

The first blade passes through the air that my nose had occupied just moments before and the owner is hit by the cue as I wrench it free and swing it into a ready position. The second clatters to the floor during a broad sweep to the left as I clip the wrist of the owner and then slam the heel of my hand into the bridge of his nose. He goes down like a sack of spuds.

I've got to keep the fight low key, if I do anything supernatural in here then word might get to them and I'll have a much harder time achieving my objectives. That means no force fields and I'll actually have to let my skin get cut if I take a hit. Best not get hit then.

No Lotus Blade either. That's a pity, but I don't need it and this could be fun. A little Nan-Gun action deals with the guy charging at me, but I seem to have gotten rather used to the coordinated movements of synthetic adversaries; some heavy guy who smells like sweat and cheap knock off Old-Spice slams into me and hammers me into the pool table with such force that my feet fly up into the air.

Partially winded, I kick out, knocking three teeth free as he pulls back to hit me and then have to roll over my shoulders as another pool cue comes hammering down where I was. The cue makes another spinning pass before it settles behind my back and I drop into a traditional ready stance.

Knowing it's coming, I let a mid-sized guy grab me into a bearhug from behind and lash out with my leg, pole-straight, kicking his head off my shoulder. He falls unconscious on the floor and I briefly spin the cue through the bottle that a large and particularly red necked individual is about to hit me with. Unlike the bottles of the movies, this doesn't shatter into powder but into a collection of long shards that shred his hand. He pitches backwards, screaming.

At that moment, I hear a distinctive click that I'd been expecting to happen eventually. Without looking, I lash out a hand, grabbing a pool ball and throw it with a great deal of force. The young gunslinger takes the ball right in the jewels and collapses. I cross the room in two strides and strip the berretta down into its component parts.

Pausing to sense, I realise that my quarry is leaving. The doors part and he's running for his truck. I will not have this effort wasted! Almost before I need to be, I'm through the door, cue in hand. Sprinting won't help you now, boy!

Hurled like a javelin, the stick passes between his legs and brings him to the ground. He's dazed when I get to him, unconscious when I punch him and naked when I drive off in his truck. It worries me how much I enjoyed that little scuffle.

* * *

It's surprising to think that Paxton, currently a butt-ugly little town sat in the middle of a small patch of reclaimed farm land in the midst of scrub prairie could turn into the bustling metropolis that it is in my time. A few things are true to what I know but until the administrative centre is moved to the tri-city in the early 80's, the city will stay compact. I can remember spending years wondering why the middle of the city was tall and full of brownstones while the outskirts looked like they'd been dropped on top of the middle and allowed to cascade outwards. 

In case you're wondering, the admin system for the state was moved here from the state capitol because of complex legal issues. Apparently, a small section of land in the midst of Paxton was still technically a British colony until 1971, as a result of the area's occupation at the time of the declaration of independence by Mexican forces. Some arguments about this stood for a few years, mostly because the union didn't want to lose face and the land was given over to the UN. At this point, despite being technically forbidden to have a base on US soil, Global Justice established themselves here and thanks to the improved protection from mad scientists and other wackjobs, many industrial complexes moved into the region.

Their labs were swollen by the obscene numbers of genius level individuals that the Middleton Enhancement Project kicked out and the rest, as they say, is history.

Right now, there's only one big lab here that actually legally exists. The Paxton observatory and space analysis complex. I've got to head there if I'm going to be able to get the gang and that truck here without the energy spike being detected. I warped into the base so I doubt that they'll think much of that.

I glance down at the inside of my left wrist and shift the muscles slightly. Finally, the LCD display implanted under the skin becomes visible and the time is finally revealed. Another seven hours before the next micro-fissure opens and I can communicate with Wade and the guys. I better find somewhere to lie low and hope that the guy I took this truck from doesn't know his own registration.

* * *

I'm sitting just off the interstate in a little place called Meg's Diner. I've been in worse places, usually after missions and it's nice to be able to get some grits for a change. With the coming of fast food they've been getting rarer and rarer these days. I sigh slightly as I polish them off along with the remains of the maple cured bacon and look up at the server. It isn't Lynn Probable, I know that much from the pictures, but she must be somewhere in that genepool because she's the spitting image of Ann when she was twenty, well, aside from the massive hair. If you thought the eighties were bad… 

"Hey," I said as she trundles over with a pot of coffee. Lord knows that I'm not all that keen to drink more of the stuff, it's the worst coffee I've had since Kim was still with us, which was somehow worse than the Joe that we have in the resistance which tastes like its been filtered with one of Brick's tubesocks.

A pair of deep hazel eyes with a fine hint of yellow gaze back at me from under a messy crop of red hair that's swept back furiously as if by some terrible wind. She smiles sweetly at me before replying.

"Hey, yourself," she says, "freshen your coffee?"

"Yeah, why not?"

"You like it?" she asks in a manner that says she works the graveyard to avoid comments to the contrary.

"Yeah, it's delicious," I lie and take a swig; I can barely stop myself choking. This one is worse than the first two.

"That's what I'm more used to," she smiles again.

"Ok, you're right, I can't take this any more. Either let me back there so I can make another pot or get me some orange juice and a bottle of Listerine."

She laughs with a tinkling like bells and tosses her already well tossed hair a little.

"You can help yourself, I'll be able to see your doings. Where did a guy like you learn to cook though?"

I pause and wonder for a second what she means. Finally, I remember what I'm dressed in and what time period. I'm dressed like a 1960's hick. I'm one of the freaking Dukes of Hazzard. Think fast Ron, think fast.

"I was in the marines. Piss off a sergeant and you spend the rest of the week peeling spuds and making coffee," not the best lie ever but it should hold.

"You were in 'Nam?"

"If I say yes, will that get me marked as a child killing monster?" I ask.

"No, it'll just make me think that you're carryin' some colourful diseases."

"Oh, none of that. I spent most of my tour around Japan and stationed in Hong Kong with the British garrison forces. Not much to say about it other than that the men are damn manly and the women are damn feminine."

"You're saying I'm not?"

"You can work that one out for yourself, Butch," I grin back as she "Harrumphs" from her stool on the other side of the counter.

"So then mister big butch marine, what're you doing back here in sleep Paxton? You're not at the base because that's all regular army boys," she trailed off with a halfway dreamy look on her face.

"You ever actually met a soldier, love? They're all hideous, horny bastards with all the grace and poise of a gorilla on acid," I laugh, feeling lighter on my feet somehow.

"Sounds like a good time. What's with the _British accent_?" she chimed, holding one finger over her top lip to produce a voice that sounds nothing like any English accent I've ever heard.

"What's with the _Yank pretending to be a Brit_ accent?" I shoot back without missing a beat, making every effort to get her mangling right.

"You still called me "Love", that's something that the guys in films like Zulu and stuff say. I thought you were from around here…"

"I am, like I say, I spent a lot of time working with the Brits."

"You're just full of surprises."

"Or you're just too used to people being predictable. What about you anyway?"

"Me?"

"Yeah, you're appearance says you're a member of either the Probable or Plaid clans, though I'd have to say Probable and I don't remember any young girls from before I left, so who are you?"

"Erm…" she hesitates, clearly off guard for the fact that someone questions her presence yet she's never met him before, "I'm a cousin of the Probables…from out of town," she adds hastily to the end of the statement.

"Well, I'm sure little Lynn will be able to tell me all about you," I roll my eyes up to look like I'm counting and to avoid looking at her and obviously searching for a tell that she's lying, "she'd be about 16 now, right?"

"Yeah, that's right."

"Well, thanks for the coffee," I say, putting down the half filled mug and dropping a few notes on the counter. I wander out of the server's gap and out the door.

I resolve to come back here before I'm done to find out what the hell kind of person masquerading as a relative doesn't bother to take note of the fact that her "cousin" is seventeen, not sixteen.

* * *

The road around the observatory is predictably empty, so I spiral up the whole thing and take a good look at old Logging Camp Road, getting a visual impression of the region and trying to work out the best location for a jump, based on the blindspots from here. I'm actually thinking that disabling the scanners during the day will be more effective as the flash will be less obvious than at night. 

"Excuse me, Sir, could you step out of the car please?"


	4. Rats

Lynn screamed.

She really wasn't the kind of girl that screamed a lot, given the people who had raised her, but this was new.

She'd never had an invisible truck turn into a very large and very visible black and chrome robot before, much less had that happen and then have the robot seize her friend Wade, who had been unfortunate enough to end up stuck precariously on the fender of the thing.

The robot turned its pair of blank eyes on her for a second before returning its gaze to Wade.

It paused for a second, with a look on its face that Lynn would have sworn was confusion.

"Wade?" it asked in a rumbling tenor voice with a richness that was uncommon. The grilling where its mouth should be putting her in mind of Darth Vader. "What have you done to me Wade?"

"I'm sorry, Buddy, we needed an operating system for the machine and I didn't have time to create anything that complex so I used the smartest, most adaptable program we could find."

"You made me into a robot?"

"It's not so bad, buddy, you have superpowers now."

"But how am I supposed to get into a habitrail now?"

At the last words of the exchange, Lynn pulled her face into an expression of abject childlike confusion and tilted her head to the side.

"Unfortunately, you're not, buddy, but you can fly. Isn't that at least some consolation?"

"No, Wade, it isn't. I'm a mole rat. Tunnels are something of a raison-d'etre for me."

"Mole-rat?" Lynn asked herself, deeply confused.

The metal giant turned his attention on her for a moment and his eyes seemed to smile.

"Is that Ron's cub?" he asked, probably directing it at Wade, "I haven't seen her since England." It paused for a moment, "I haven't seen anything since England. Why is that?"

"You were killed, buddy. We preserved you because you were a 97 match to the personality of the original Rufus. We thought it best to keep your code as a sort of model of perfection."

"I'm perfect?" the robot asked, puzzled.

"Perfect in your imitation and almost as smart and resourceful as the original. You even showed hints of the Monkey power," Wade gasped as the fingers on the giant's hand began to press in just a little more tightly than was comfortable, "Look, buddy, I'm sorry you got woken up like this, I was going to ease you in slowly, it would've been like waking from a dream, just please, put me down, you're hurting me."

"Oh Cheese, I'm sorry Wade," the giant robot looking positively hurt, "I hate it when I can't protect my humans properly."

Wade sighed with relief as he was placed gently on the ground, "Just like the original." There was a calm, honest smile on Wade's face at that moment. "Lynn, come and meet Rufus. I don't know if you remember him, but he remembers you."

Lynn stepped forward, unused to the idea that something larger than her was not a Diablo or monstrous synthetic out for her blood. The robot dropped down on one knee and seemed to shift its frame slightly to be a little more light the truck it was and somehow more like the mole-rat it claimed to be.

"Hey, Lynn," the giant said with a smile in his voice. That surprised her more than a little; that she had suddenly begun to gender a giant robot. That was something that she had never considered; even the synthetics that looked like Bonnie or Tara or her late sister were just things, just its.

"Hey," she replied, feeling more than a little self conscious in front of the massive creature that even virtually prone, towered over her.

"It's been a long time. You've grown from a mere cub into a little human. What's it like?"

"What's what like?" Lynn replied, unsure of herself.

"What's it like to be a grown up now?"

Wade laughed easily at this.

"I still forget that you're not the original Rat to bear the name Rufus; you didn't see Kim and Ron grow up. You weren't there when Kim died and you never knew Ron when he was still happy. She isn't an adult yet my friend. She has a whole lot of growing and a mystical and unpleasant time called puberty ahead of her before she's an adult."

"Puberty?" both the Ruf-bot and Lynn asked at once.

"It's a time when she's going to grow the body of an adult, decide she likes boys and break Ron's heart," Wade laughed at a joke neither of them would understand.

"I'm not going to break daddy's heart. I love him," Lynn cried defiantly.

"You'll not do anything intentionally. At least I hope you won't. No, that's just once of the perks of fatherhood."

The robot and the little girl exchanged meaningful looks, or at least as meaningful as a robot with the mind of a rodent and poor facial articulation and a small child with huge eyes can muster.

"Come on, Lynn, throw me the remote, I need to put Rufus here back to sleep so I can get all of his systems working."

"Will I be completely unaware during this?" asked the robot with a strong sound of sadness in his voice. He had only just woken up, albeit in an alien body and didn't want to enter into oblivion again.

"I'll tell you what. I'll shut you down now and port you across to one of the little robots in my lab. They should have enough processing power, though you might find that it's like thinking in treacle. Is that ok for you?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry to be a problem, Wade," he said, looking down and doing a good impression of when his master used to effectively try to make himself invisible because he was causing trouble. Wade knew well that this was actually a trained response to avoid setting Kim off rather than anything normal like embarrassment. The Stoppable line didn't seem to have that particular social trait in their genetics anywhere. This may be how a heavyset Jewish man managed to woo Jean Cotton in the first place; no fear of embarrassment.

* * *

Somewhat later on, Lynn sat with a small robot, looking on in amazement as it rammed its tail into a computer terminal and then spent time building itself four replacement limbs and a head piece from bits and pieces in Wade's lab.

"What're you doing, Rufus?" she asked as he slotted his second limb, a hind leg into place where a wheel had been previously.

"I'm making a mole-rat body for a mole-rat mind. I'm going to sit on your shoulders and curl up on the top of your head like a big heavy hat if it kills me and I'm going to do it without killing you."

"Killing me?"

"If I sat on you in that big robot body, you'd be a goner."

"Oh yeah," Lynn smiled slightly and slapped her forehead lightly in the manner that her father often did.

"Don't do that. It leaves a mark…and no-one looks dumber than the person with a handprint on their face," the little robot said to her, still talking in that deep voice. It was somewhat discordant and made her laugh.

"I'm glad to hear some laughter, especially the laughter of a Stoppable. Where is Ron anyway?" Rufus asked, leading to another tilted head from Lynn

"Don't you know anything? He's in the past trying to make sure my mommy and sister are born so I can be born and be special."

"He's in the past? What?"

"Yeah, that's where you're going too. When the truck is ready, you'll be going back with Wade and the others to help him. Apparently, he needs help there."

"That's a pity," replied the increasingly mole-rat like entity.

"What's a pity?"

"I was just starting to enjoy being here and rat shaped again. Besides, who's going to watch out for you and Anne while they're off gallivanting through time?"

"Well, you have to go because the only computer mind thingy that's smart enough to get them back there."

"Wait, wait, drop the act. I know for a fact that if you have half as much Possible DNA as you claim to have then you're a hell of a lot sharper than you're pretending to be."

"Dad says to keep things just for yourself and not to upstage people. She says their egos get bruised easily. I think he means their shins…"

"That sounds like Ron alright. Right, go over there and find me a neural link compiler. I'll install one inside this body so that I'll have a backup and I'll both get transferred back into the big body and stay here. That way, I'll be able to keep an eye on you."

"I don't need that. I'm already stronger, faster and smarter than all the other kids in the crèche."

"My my my, you have the self belief and lack of realism as all Possibles. Hasn't your father taught you a lesson on that? No matter how good you are, no matter how dangerous, there's always a bigger fish."

"Bigger fish?"

"Someone better. You should train with that boy of Yori's. He's just as much a Stoppable as you are and he's been training. I remember that Ron was the only one able to beat him in training when I was last around. Then again, people were letting him win."

"How do you know all this stuff?" Lynn demanded, bottom lip out and eyes blazing.

"Hah! The puppy dog pout, well, kind of. That isn't going to work missy. I know stuff because nobody notices the mole-rats, even the most intelligent of the bunch who can get the others to work together smoothly. I listened and used it to help Ron and he loved me for it. I just wish I knew how I died."

"I don't know."

"I know who does though."

* * *

Wade was humming happily to himself as he worked, occasionally making requests and then not looking up as the trio of Wade-bot units and the hoard of fast moving mole-rats moved to do as he had asked. The floor looked like a rolling mass of pink with the occasional spanner and welding torch undulating across the surface as if it were alive.

He failed to hear the first cough, the second he ignored and the third, very sharp one caused him to bang his head on the inside of the truck's hood.

"What is it?" he demanded without looking back, a sore patch already developing where his cornrows had been hammered against his skull.

"I need to ask you something, Wade," replied the southern accent he had been trying to dodge for more than a month.

"If this is about going into the past, the answer is no, Anne, a thousand times no. It's not that we don't trust you to go back into the same past where your mother was kidnapped while undergoing a teenage pregnancy, only to be experimented on by the government to try to produce a super soldier/genius thing, a program which culminated in the birth of Kim, Jim and Tim Possible, each a polymath and gifted beyond that in some way. Well, ok, it is that we don't trust you but we wouldn't trust anyone not to meddle with something like that."

"That wasn't what I was going to ask you, actually."

"Oh. Then fire away."

"Why did you give that mole-rat to my daughter. You know how much of an effect losing the first version of it had on her."

"I had little choice and frankly, I think that thing has some connection to the original Rufus, the real one. In fairness, I don't think the thing can manifest the monkey power now if it wanted to. No organic parts. I really don't think there's any danger of a repeat of what happened then."

"But how can you be sure?"

"If you do things with an attachment to the outcome, you sour both process and outcome and come to resent both."

"You've been listening to Ron."

"No actually, reruns of Kung Fu!"


	5. Looking Glass

"Honey, what is it?" asked a voice that once had held passion and laughter but now seemed drained and tired.

She received no response and that was not unusual. Her genius husband remained fixed in place, staring at a sequence of flashing numbers and letters that she had never been able to decipher. It wasn't a code, it was feedback from something impossibly complex and that something was what had turned her beloved into the hollow, angry shell that he was now.

She remained at his shoulder for a few moments before turning to leave the massive glass dome that served as an office, a ceiling of dull, opaque sky hanging heavily above them. She paused at the threshold for a moment.

"Ron, this isn't healthy. You should at least eat something. What about a sandwich?"

There was no answer.

* * *

"I know what's going on here."

The words were so far removed from her own thoughts that she shocked awake. Unsure of what to put on a sandwich, the magazine in the kitchen had seemed like a good source of inspiration but that had come to naught.

"Stay out of my head," she muttered to herself, sour expression forming as she picked herself up from the breakfast counter, leaving a sore imprint of the magazine across her temple. She shook her head and for a moment, her eyelids hang heavy.

"The more you stray back into your world, the easier it is to get into this one."

Another jolt and another fierce surge of wakefulness splashed against her. Episodes like this were becoming more and more common with the Ron-like monster accosting her in her dreams more and more often. It was getting truly frightening.

"They're nothing but your imagination playing cruel tricks," she said to herself, horrified that she was having recurring nightmares now; after all she had done to pull the world out of the self-destructive chaos that had embroiled it for so long. The current project was nothing compared to that.

And what did he mean, Your world?

Putting such thoughts aside, she tried to remember how her husband liked his tuna; as simple thing that she had done a thousand times before, but now seemed so much more difficult and things were playing on her mind like nothing else.

The fact that Ron was a few years older than he should be could be explained away by the time it took to remove her from her death and bring her forward but that didn't explain how the world had gotten weird so quickly. The changes seemed to have been going on for a long time, though apparently the media was a lot more propaganda inclined back when it still existed independently.

Her revere broke as she nicked herself with the knife, trying to cut in a straight line. This was something that anyone else would probably have had little trouble with but now it was betraying her to the lands of kitchen embarrassment once again.

A wobbly sandwich was ok though, tuna was easy and with measures for the herbs and stuff, she couldn't fail. The kitchen's appliances had even obligingly blended the whole thing together for her.

* * *

As the door for the office loomed ahead, she drew an uneasy sense of foreboding. The air was electric.

The door was also slightly ajar, despite the fact that she'd closed it carefully, meaning that he'd moved. This was probably a good thing but after his rage when the first fluctuation in reality occurred some months ago, he'd become more unpredictable by the day.

"Ron? Honey?" she said, not really expecting a response as she pushed her way through the door. The room was a mess, the very fabric of the structure being hammered as if by violent winds from the inside. The dome itself was cracked and fine rain was slipping in through the damage to wet the carpet and ruin the book that was spread out on the coffee table beside the reading chairs.

It looked like he'd lost control of the power again. This wasn't the first time, though luckily, she'd found a contractor that was willing to mass produce these dome rooms and replace them swiftly. They didn't ask questions because their business was so lucrative.

In the centre of the room lay the wheelchair bound frame of her husband, apparently spent for the moment. His head was handing back on his shoulders and his arms spread wide as if his unconscious body was praying, calling to the heavens in ecstasy.

"Ron, oh God, Ron!" she cried, running to the centre of the room and holding him, trying desperately to rouse him.

Moments later he stirred.

"Kim?" he asked through a haze of confusion.

"Yes, honey, I'm here," she said, concern driving tears before it down her face.

"He…it's been flirting with her, our daughter!" he choked out after a moment, his tears filled with such rage that they stung as they flee on her arms.

"So what, Honey, it's not like she's going to fall in love with him or anything. You're sounding like what you used to hate about my father."

"I think this has gone beyond her ability to handle this. If we don't prevent them messing with the time stream, you may never be born and heaven only knows what will happen to this world."

"Are…are you saying that you're going to need your best agent on the case?" she asked finally.

"Yes, I'm afraid that may be necessary."

His words were cold and harsh and much as she loved him, the idea of meeting a more powerful version of him, a younger, less bitter version of him from another world was a pang of pain deep inside. A Ron that wouldn't lose control of the powers that fate had forced upon him, a Ron who still remembered how to laugh, a Ron with loins that still worked…

"If you cannot do this, Kimberly, there may not be a home to return to. Just like before, I'll monitor your progress, but I can't set foot there," either he missed the irony of the statement or didn't have the sense of humour left to care.

Silently, Kim stood and strode from the room.

Ron reflected to himself that it was dangerous letting her this near to the truth of her origins but that was an issue that wouldn't resolve itself easily.

* * *

Author's Note: This and What Rons May Come have begun to overlap now and its driving me crazy because i don't want to tip my hand in either story about the other too much... 


	6. Lunch

"Is there something wrong, Officer," I ask as my face is planted firmly into the bonnet of the stolen car. He obviously doesn't see the funny side of this, nor the fact that he cuffs don't seem to want to bind to my wrists. I'm not consciously doing anything so I have no idea why that would be happening.

Maybe my previous experience in captivity has led to this as a natural reaction; last time I was successfully imprisoned, it was in Shego's little nookie nest, an experience that yielded a child I've never been able to meet and a lot of bad memories.

"Why the hell aren't my cuffs working?" he asks himself, though the whole process sounds more like, "Whu-aye, thuh hill ain't mah cuurffs werkin'," with his accent.

"At a guess, they don't want to."

"Now son, if you don't start treating me with some damn respect, I'm going to have to do some work on your attitude."

"What's to respect? You ask me to step out of my car then grab me, slam my head into the car hood and try unsuccessfully to cuff me. Really worth respecting."

"Why you…" he says as he makes his glorious final mistake. Automatic hands catch both his billy-club wielding wrist and his crotch and push and pull them respectively. He's catapulted off his feet into the ground and loses consciousness.

"Crap…" I mutter to myself, realising that I've just committed a crime worth four to five in an era where it'll probably end in a government sanctioned lynching. That could have gone better.

* * *

Trundling down the mountain, I come to a conclusion. I need a new car.

One quick stop over at Crazy Hank's Car-emporium on Southern Boulevard gets me a small German made thing that looks like it was made from spare parts from the Luftwaffe.

Suddenly, on my left, I can't believe my eyes, it can't be…

That old black and white photo in the hallway at Bueno Nacho HQ, that was here?

I can't help myself; I'm turning through honking traffic and into their lot before I can even think. The car sounds a death rattle as I twist the key back, turning the machine off. Hardly a stallion, this vehicle is the mechanical equivalent of a donkey.

The yard looks like it was fairly recently treated with new asphalt and giant man in a poncho casts a nice shadow on my junker so that the sun won't make the seats too warm.

The jingle as I push through the door is just like I remember from the old days, though those days are more than thirty years off. The vinyl tables, the mild odour of disinfectant near the door and the bitter spicy tang of mayonnaise spatter hitting a deep fat fryer are all there. Hot damn, I'm home.

"Hey there," announces the fairly pretty young black lady behind the counter, dressed in a sort of dinner-lady apron and round hat combination, "may I take your order, sir?"

"Sir, Beautiful? Nah, that's my father. Just call me Rondo. I'd like a Chimerito, three tacos and a serving of nachos please," I beam at her. She seems mysteriously discomforted by this.

"Sorry, Sir, we don't have none of them Chimerangos. We have Chimichangas but not whatever it was that you were asking for."

After a moment of furrowed brow confusion, realisation dawns like gas after too much soda.

"Oh, right, chimichanga, that's what I meant."

With my food in hand and a little less 1965 currency in pocket, I wander happily over to the booth that would one day become my own and slid into my seat. Possibly because of psychic resonance or possibly because they've yet to replace the cushions, the ass-groove meets me coming the other way and bonds perfectly to the seat of my pants.

Now that is comfort.

It's at times like this that I really regret not having an eye for details.

As I munch through the second nacho of my serving, having demolished a taco and a chimichanga [which to me means thingumabob because of the gift of tongues a dark shadow falls over my dinner.

I look up to find that the shadow belongs to one very angry looking black gentleman with a pair of nervous looking friends stood in his wake. He's simmering rather fiercely and looks like he's trying to burst a vein.

"Is there something I can do for you?" I ask as cheerfully as I can.

"You've got some nerve sitting your John Brown hindparts in a blackman's seat! There are like three tables in the nigger section here and you have to sit at one?"

"I'm sorry, what?" I ask as he seethes and boils over me.

"You heard me, Whitey!" he says as his hand lashes out and grips the front of my flannel shirt. Damn the resilience of these garments!

I'm hauled up as far as my knees under the table will allow and I can't help smiling at the fact that I'm actually more afraid of this guy than I have been of a giant robot in years.

"Son, I don't know exactly what it is that I've done to you, but I swear to you that you're biting off more than you can chew if you plan on attacking me."

"Lucius, we gotta go," chimes up one of his friends, looking nervous.

"We're pushing it with the troopers as it is," mutters the other, looking around as if cops were about to sprout from the walls.

"I ain't afraid of no John Brown state troopers!" he rails then turns back to me, "I'm going to teach you a lesson in cultural equality old man."

Almost involuntarily my old sense of humour kicks in; I think it's something to do with being back here in a Bueno Nacho again. My flesh shifts and slowly ages, growing wrinkles and retracting teeth. He looks on in horror as my powerful, wiry body degrades into the hanging skin and dull eyes of an old, old man.

"I'm shhhhorry, shhhhhunny," I whistled at him, grinning insanely, "my old earshhhh mushhhht be failing me; what washhh it you shhhaid?"

Instantly, he recoils, a look of maddened horror on his face. By the time his friends get a good look at me, I've changed back.

"What the ffffff…uck?" he squeals in panic. His friends just look at him like he's mad.

"Mind your language, friend," I say quietly, "there's a beautiful lady over behind the counter to be offended by such things."

"You can just get your cracker self out of here, now!" he yells at me, much of the cool that had made him a threat dissipating like so much flatulence.

"I think not my young friend, I think not," I reply, sitting down and calmly beginning to eat my way through the cheesy goodness of my dinner.

He stands there and fumes for a few minutes, then moves away, his nervous friends in tow.

* * *

"Alright, Wade, Sing for me," I breathe at the communicator unit that emerges from the meat of my left wrist. Moments later, the little campsite is lit from an ethereal source and Wade in his white clad form swims into focus.

"Ah, Ron, good to see you," he smiles at me.

"Tell me that you'll be porting in some time soon. I've found somewhere for you to emerge where there'll be no witnesses and I can disable the observatory systems any time as long as you want to enter in the day. The place is mostly deserted when it's light."

"I'm just working a few rats into the system and then we'll be able to make the shift. I'm transferring the finalised crew compliment and record data to your chip now."

I shudder under the force of the data influx. My mind is suddenly filled with lists and images that weren't there before, things that when I think of them, open like computer files and cascade down across my conscious vision. Like trails of after images, I think to myself.

"That's good, Wade. You're planning to bring Bonnie along? Where are we going to hide someone that hot in a hick town?"

"Don't worry Ron; no matter how much you're into her, she isn't that attractive."

He suddenly gets a look of fear in his eyes, then his head jerks back as an unseen hand grips onto his cornrows and pulls hard.

"Ah! God, you're hurting me Bonnie! Yes, I know that you won Miss Middleton when you were eight. Owww! Stop it, look, Ron knows I'm kidding, why don't you? Owww! Ok, I'll apologise and tell him that you're a graceful and intelligent young woman with an ass that's so smooth it could be made of cottage cheese. Yes! Gah! I'm sorry."

His head finally comes loose and he looks at me seriously.

"I take it you heard all of that?" he asks with a smug grin and I burst out laughing. I can imagine the look of horror on Bonnie's face right now and I still love poking her about her vanity even now. He's going to get it once the link is down.

"Yeah, I heard, Wade. Right, now take a look at some things for me. The mem-chip should have stored the likenesses of two people I met today. The first is a girl in the diner, looks a little like Kim and the second is a black kid who tried to attack me for being in the wrong seat. Find out if either of them are important to the future."

His fingers begin to dance in the air, skimming over an unseen keyboard with the grace of a concert pianist. The first answer takes seconds.

"I thought I recognised the guy when I called the image up. He's called 'Big' Julius Chaser, the star end from the Paxton Patriots in their winning season next year, during the race riots. He's a fairly stand up kid, though his biography tells how he ended up getting a lesson in life from some football camp about his misunderstanding of the writing of some of the greats of the racial equality movement. He becomes a leader of the Calmers during the riots, along with one Cary Flagg. Name ring any bells?"

"Brick? What, father? Grandfather?"

"Uncle actually. His father was the youngest of a batch of four. The oldest was off in Vietnam by this point. This one is the second brother. No, Cary has a less fortunate set of circumstances but was something of a hero in his own right."

"Okay, and the girl?"

"She…that's odd. I can't find anything."

"So she never made any noteworthy contribution to history then?"

"No, I don't mean that I don't have any major records of her, I mean I can't find anything. She's obviously related to the Possibles; the face shape alone is enough to see that, but I can't find anything at all. I mean nothing, no school records, no dental records, nothing transferred from older systems. It's as if she never existed."

"Maybe she just died before things went computerised. It happens."

"Maybe, Ron, but my gut is making funnies on this one."

"I trust that intestinal tract of yours, but lets not jump to conclusions. Right, final prep I need you to make. I'll find somewhere to lay low; you get the truck and the other gear ready and give me a time to silence the observatory. I need you to make sure that Damien takes those pills I got from Drakken and I need you to make sure Anne puts those shift implants into Bonnie. We can take them out afterwards but I don't think she's going to blend if we don't make sure she doesn't look like a half-caste. You make sure that you upload a full spread into your neural plugs and build a training program for football. I suspect that we might both need it."

"Right you are, Ron. Oh, one more thing. You're going to have to take a trip."

"Trip? Where to?"

"Montana."

"What's in Montana? The only think I can think of in Montana is the Lazy C ranch. Wait. You're not suggesting I do anything to mess with history are you?"

"No actually. When I told Nanna about this plan in order to determine what was going on in Middleton at the time, she mentioned that a man that she worked with back in the fifties came by unexpectedly for a visit and gave James a little rocket, sparking his interest in space. I'm not sure what the event she was referring to in the fifties was, but I think that this was you, Ron."

"You expect me to go back and assist in producing a man that causes me so much pain?"

"I expect you to go back and make a man who will sire that which brought you so much joy, Ron. No matter your feelings about him, you should be able to deal with him. Besides, the time system was mostly his research anyway." He shrugged gently.

I curse to myself under my breath.

"Very well, I guess I'll have to go and do it. What did the rocket look like?"

Wade types something else and a hologram of the little rocket ship, obviously something out of a space serial, fluxed its way into existence between us.

"Like this?" I ask as I hold out my hand and sand and grass floods up and forging itself into a little rocket above my palm.

"Perfect. Is there anything else you need?"

I sigh heavily before answering, "nothing specific, just the time and date of the next microfissure."

"Tuesday eighth. We should be ready by then, though I'm going to take anything that Bonnie inflicts on me for the implants out on you when I get there."

"I look forward to it," I reply, slowly rising from the ground and fading from view. As I begin to fly towards Montana and part of my miserable destiny I apparently have a hand in creating, I consider the good things that James did for me over the years. I was basically his son for so many years that it's almost untrue. It troubles me that he turned on me, but if I do something to stop that, to interfere now, I may ruin everything. Great, like Oedipus, I basically have to kill my father.

Damn you, Kim, for making me pay attention in Barkin's lectures!

* * *

Author's Note: Jeez, I'm sorry it took so long to get something worth reading out. A combination of final year Theology and depression has me in a pickle. That and a recent rediscovery of the purest awesome that is the StarWars franchise. An old droid altering pilot character has exploded back onto the scene with new companions and a new enemy in the form of Grace Parks in black leather. Meow. 


	7. Change

"Alright, Lynn, that should do it," said Wade as he stepped back from the truck and pressed the noisy cricket once again.

Almost at the same instant, the truck began to shift, panels and components realigning and distorting until a humanoid shape began to emerge, pushing itself up on its hands and taking to its feet.

Rufus looked down at Lynn with a mixture of sadness and pride in his eyes for a moment.

"Okay buddy, how's it feel?"

"Everything seems to be working, Wade, though thinking is like being trapped in an old version of Windows."

"We'll do what we can to clean up the interface. In theory, it should be almost completely instinctive once we're finished. Lynn, why don't you head off, this won't be particularly interesting; I'm just going to have Rufus go through all of his systems to make sure he knows how to control them all.

"Okay, Wade!" she replied cheerfully; much more cheerfully than he expected in fact, and skipped out of the maintenance bay.

"Now, she'd usually want to stand behind me and ask me complicated questions the whole time. That is odd," Wade muttered to himself, scratching his head slowly.

"I explained that you'd have to go through everything with a fine tooth comb. She understands most of the processes involved here so it was a fairly simple thing," Rufus filled in from behind him.

"That's okay, I guess," Wade said before turning back around, "Whoa, Rufus, what the hell did you do?"

"You like it?" the giant robot asked happily. Wade was stunned; how had an animal mind, albeit a smart one, figured out how to use the servo balance system to alter the shape of the robot body into something rather…other than humanoid? Wade kept staring as the bulky, rat-like body stood itself up and stretched into a more human shape.

"Rufus, that's a very complicated piece of machinery, how the hell did you do that?" Wade demanded as he gathered up his fallen jaw.

"How the hell did I get opposable thumbs as a rodent? I guess it's one of life's little mysteries."

"Riiiight."

* * *

"Did I do good?" Lynn asked in a concerned voice as she played with the heavy metal doll that she cradled in her arms.

"You did great, honey. Now, all we have to do is get the supplies I need and I'll be able to do the job I was given by the master."

"Master?"

"Ron, silly. I'm his friend and more or less his servant, voluntarily though. The last thing he told me to do was to look after you and Yoshi. I'm going to do that if it kills me."

Lynn looked at him quizzically.

"Okay, fine, the last thing he actually said to me was along the lines of, "Rufus watch out for that rack!" but this sounds much more heroic."

Lynn watched as the little robot kept working; chatting and joking with him for several hours until she got hungry and wandered off. It was nearly three days before she remembered that the little robot was still in the lab.

"Rooooofus!" she called out happily as she wandered into the lab, looking around to try to spot the robot before he found her.

Rufus was nowhere to be found. She looked high, she looked low and still she couldn't find him. Just as she was beginning to get disheartened, seemingly alone in the steel room, she heard a noise from the door. She wheeled around just in time to see Wade coming into the room.

"What're you doing in here all alone?" he asked in his baritone voice, smiling slightly as she shot across the room and slammed into his leg.

"I was looking for something I left here," she replied, not realising that she was using one of the dissembling techniques that Steve had been training into her. 

"What was it? Maybe I can help you find it," Wade said, smiling.

"I don't think it's here," she replied, again truthfully.

"Okay then. Just ask before you come in here again, okay? There are some dangerous things in here."

"Okay Wade," she chorused as she disappeared out of the room like a red blur.

"Crazy kids," Wade rumbled, then remembered why he was there, "I wonder what happened to that interface unit…"

* * *

Damien was working away happily at his desk when Lynn wandered into the information suite. He didn't look up, mostly because he has interested in the book but also because he wasn't sure he wanted to encourage her to bother him.

"Damien," she said sweetly, extending her vowels to make the situation seem cuter.

Damien sighed and looked up from the crazed mess that covered the research desk.

"What is it, Lynn?" he asked with a tired sound to his voice.

"What'cha doin?" she asked in that insanely annoying way of six year olds.

"I'm trying to work out how we can alter time without it coming back to bite us."

"Wouldn't it come forward to bite you?"

Damien paused at this. He was going to reply but there was an undeniable logic to her response. He smiled.

"I guess it would. Your father seems to think that it can be done but I can't see how."

"Wouldn't it have always been like that?" Lynn asked, picking up a picture of a mid-west girl from the 1960s. 

"To normal people, but not to Ron or Wade or me. We don't really fit the normal moulds of reality."

"Have you seen Rufus?" she asked him without missing a beat but shifting onto a completely different rail in the same moment.

"He's still in the hanger isn't he? I didn't think he could actually get out of there; too big for the corridors."

"No then," she pulled a face and wandered off.

Damien shrugged to himself, assuming that she'd named one of the drones or something. He went back to his reading without a further worry, managing to send himself off on completely the wrong set of assumptions.

For a brief moment, Damien paused. In films, sensitive characters feel disturbances, which is probably just a way of saying someone walked over your grave; someone nudged a toe onto his for the briefest of moments. With a slight shudder, he brushed it off and went back to what he was doing.

* * *

Rufus was seriously concerned by this point. There was an anomaly in the base's security. Little more than the motes of dust that the computer core had ridden it off as but there was something more to it, a linearity to these anomalies they would appear in certain places at certain times and the only pattern he could discern is that they occasionally returned to one of the service areas where the monitoring is thinnest. Stalking through the narrow vents like they were a habitrail, he extended the custom sensors he had devised and rested his head low. 

The tremors were almost invisible over the conventional movements of the ventilation but his whiskers began to map out a continuous pattern to those. Like a visualisation from a music track, a field of flat, fluid vibration spread out before him with a huge number of tiny peaks and complicated ripples like a pond in the rain.

He felt for the undercurrents and mentally screened out the background matter. One moment, two, he waited and waited and then; the faintest pulse, but directional and traceable. He smiled and set off down the tunnel, placing his feet precisely within the wave forms of other vibrations, making him utterly silent.

_Lets see you avoid me now, ghost_, he thought with a determined smile.

* * *

_How do they manage like this? Surely they should have been found and rooted out years ago?_ wondered the infiltrator as she skulked in the ventilation system. The child was precisely where the master had predicted and she was mostly unshielded, only accompanied by a small handful of little pink rodents at any given time. They were insignificant though. The girl fairly radiated power but it was unfocused. Why the master wasn't planning to use her for something was beyond comprehension.

For a moment she thought she heard something. Shifting silently and slowly, she turned to look the other way up the vent shaft but there was nothing there. Strange, her senses never played tricks on her. Returning to watching the girl, she realised that she had lost her again. How did the brat get around so swiftly?

Despite being honed to the very edge of perfection, she still failed to notice the strange, spidery metal object wedged into one of the fan apertures in above her. Slowly, it lowered itself to the base of the vent after she passed and unfolded to its full size. Rather than a spider as first impressions went, it had only four limbs and they weren't linked to a central mass, rather spread along like mammalian limbs. As its head finally unfolded to its proper position, the two photoreceptors rotated out from their normative position and focused for binocular vision. It regarded the path of the disappeared infiltrator for a moment, them a sextet of fine glass fibre cables unfolded forwards from the sides of its head.

_I'm sure I know that ass from somewhere,_ thought Rufus in a mildly annoyed inner monologue before setting off after her.

* * *

Author's Note: Yes, I am aware how annoyingly short this chapter is but needlessly elongating it will not make it more enjoyable. 


	8. Arrival again

_Note: Though my usual practice is to place my disclaimers in the first chapter only, I want it remembered that the characters presented here that are inspired by those real people who played in the 1971 Alexandria Titans football team are based on their portrayals in the Disney film Remember the Titans._

_I have never had the fortune to meet any of these individuals but please keep in mind that I hold them in the deepest respect and where any portrayal is different, it is made for dramatic or comedic purposes. Should anyone portrayed within this story recognise themselves and wish to pass comment, feel free to contact me._

_If any portrayals are inaccurate, let me know, though they were made with great fondness for your fictionalised selves. Thank you._

* * *

"There has to be something more to this."

"I've told you that there isn't. Beyond this limited understanding, all you need if faith."

"I'm supposed to buy this without questioning the where and the why of it?"

"More or less."

I glance up the length of the empty road and make eye contact with me teacher. He isn't a guru, a sensei or a sifu. I don't really expect to reach enlightenment with his words, yet still, they carry a strange amount of weight as I listen to them.

Another gust of desert air cuts across the scenery, moving a few scraps of sage brush and a few tiny swirls of dust in the moonlight. There is silence here, but not the perfect silence of man but the crazed, noisy silence of nature. Far distant crickets and locusts sing their songs and the wind makes its gusts and gales as it chafes slowly across my cheeks.

"You see the beauty of this night?" asks the youngish man stood across from me.

"Yes," I reply slowly, wondering if there is a trick wrapped in his words.

"You know the significance of my showing you this?"

"Is there ever any significance to what you do in this world?"

"Ron, you scathe me," he grins, sardonic glee dripping from his words, "as if I would ever waste the effort needed to simply tease you."

Maybe he's being honest, but at the moment I can't tell. Am I in the Dreamtime? Am I actually stood on this dusty desert road in the midst of America? If I am, this is like some bad Americana song.

A lonely desert highway with a man who can wander dreams and make them real.

I snort a little laugh as I think about the cliché nature of the world.

"You object to this place, Ron?"

"No, though I can't see the significance. It is more than a little bit different to your usual domains. Less ice."

He seems positively amused by this, grinning through that beard of his; a strange red mass that covers his face at some moments and a scruffy layer of dense stubble the next. Darker than Immortal's yet less consistent.

"I think I'm trying to make a metaphor. Never was any good at this. As you know, I have a horrible habit of letting them get away from me."

"You found her."

"Metaphors get away from me. She didn't and neither do any of the other people I help. That's not what this is about. You're letting yourself wander."

"What?"

"Where are we, Ron?"

"This is the Upperton-Paxton highway, just outside Eastly. The estate where Kim will live years from now is just over there."

"And what significance does it hold?"

"This is where the rest of my team will appear when they come back to help me."

"That's true. Why do I sense that you feel conflicted?"

"Conflicted about what?" I ask, not understanding where he'd going.

"You say that your team is coming to help you. Is it that you don't believe in what you're doing or is it that you feel that you're going to end up bringing them into danger? You've never really shown any problems with introducing the willing into danger before."

"This is different, Narrator, and you know it."

"How so?"

"You know, God-damnit!"

"I really feel that I don't, Ronald. Why not spell it out for the man lacking in intuition?"

I sigh. I can't help it. He knows what's going on here more than I do. He can feel my heartbeat through the flavour of this reality. He can see the emotions that play around me like a shoal of fish and he can herd them like tiny sheep. Am I asleep and dreaming, or have I just let myself lose focus and drift off on the road?

"Only you can answer that one, Ron."

"Damn you! How do you do that?"

"Answer the question and I might tell you."

"We're not just here to change things; we're here to make something happen that's already happened. I know for a fact that Chet Book is the young man who took the virginity of Mona Paines. I know that Damien is the father of the mother of my child. I know that without the events that we're set to cause in the next month, the schools in this city wouldn't have been forced to integrate and the Paxton Coondogs wouldn't have become the Maddogs. We're planning to change the whole world that these people live in and why?

"We're here to fulfil a sick prophecy that hasn't even been made yet. How can I know that this is right?"

"Do you want me to answer that question or do you want me to stand here and let you figure it out all on your lonesome?"

"What?"

I look at him as the world seems to tilt slightly so that the moon is directly behind him, frosting him in chill white light and making the illumination in his eyes seem all the more unsettling. He has answers and I hate to think what those might be.

"Do you want these answers, Ron? Or are you going to dodge that truck?"

"Truck?" I manage before a sequence of flashes consume the desert around me, leaving fallow fields and crappy hedgerows as far as the eye can see. Thick clouds boil up to cover the moon and the massive form of a black and chrome truck fills my vision from edge to edge barely an inch from my nose, the beautiful shimmer of flickering flames dancing across the surfaces of facings.

Damn, I think as I try to catch my breath.

* * *

With a sequence of events that verge on the unfollowable, time and space tear and shred before me. Infinite probabilities sunder and twist, new worlds spin into existence and vanished, lights like the auroras cascade down the deserted street and finally, a massive black and chrome truck ploughs off down the deserted road. Even I couldn't help this one.

"Wow" I mutter as the trails of fire left by the eighteen massive wheels begin to gutter and die. Bending time a little, I dash up beside it and slam into the huge man who's just emerged from the passenger door.

A thick baritone laugh that shakes my lungs and vibrates my bones curls out as Wade grabs me into a bearhug that even I can feel, stony flesh or no.

"Hahahaha, Ron! It's been too long my friend!"

"Yeah, how long has it actually been for you guys?" I ask.

"Almost nine months. Lynn misses you a great deal you know."

"I know, though I didn't throw in for this project for the love of time travel. Three weeks and I've been attacked more than a dozen times and I'm being hunted as a Soviet Superweapon. I'm doing slightly worse than normal but not noticeably so. You have everything that we need?"

"Right down to the zany grow-a-house thing you demanded. Did you managed to secure everything we need?"

"Yes, though it was difficult. I had to borrow a great deal of money from Nana Possible to get it done. I cannot believe you sent me there by the way! Do you have any idea how hot that woman is? How that man could be so disinterested in her is beyond me."

"Not all of us get off on having action women to play with as you do Ron, some of us would actually like a quiet life."

"You think I don't want a quiet life? All I've ever wanted was a quiet life."

"That's bull and you know it. You're hooked on heroics and knowing that you've done the right thing, just like me. If you'd never met Kim you'd probably be bored out of your skull working in some diner as a cook in Drakken's new regime."

"Why do you say that as if it were a bad thing. I'm not a slouch with the ladies, albeit oblivious in my early days. I had Tara desperate for a nice bit of Ronshine for some time."

"Yeah, and you had no damn idea!" came a second voice from the direction of the front of the truck. There stood Damien in a rather out of place looking body glove and a slightly plump white girl with dirty blonde hair and beautiful hazel eyes hidden behind thick rimmed glasses and round cheeks.

"Yes, but its th…" I freeze, momentarily unsure if my senses are being accurate with me, "Bonnie, please say that isn't you."

"Yes, you son of a bitch, it's me. Anne turned me into the pretty-ugly character of this little batch of silliness," the girl replied, cocking her hip heavily to one side in a manner that the sweater and skirt combo that she was wearing made seem immensely sexy.

"Well," I said, turning back to Wade, "I'm going to enjoy the sixties. Especially the crack," I finish as he and I both break down into fits of puerile sniggering. Once she had completed her theatrical stalk off, complete with the heels of her clenched fists pointed at the floor with straight arms, I got straight back to business. Well, after watching her newly enhanced posterior vacate anyway.

"So yeah, I purchased a small plot on the limits of town where the old McDermud place will be eventually, secured us placements at the Paxton Grammar School and dealt with all the minor things that we needed for cover. I even took the time to track down everyone what we've ever met in order to determine what may influence the future if we aren't careful."

"Is there anything we need to know specifically?"

"In this form, I'm wanted in seven states," I grin, before my skin ripples slightly, changing me into a fairly slight teenager, almost identical to how I used to be, "but conveniently, not in this one."

"Yeah, Ron, just one question," Wade said after a moment, "if we managed to get the disguise systems working by mimicking your abilities, why did you insist on Bonnie having admittedly reversible cosmetic surgery?"

"Two reasons; one, when she figures it out she's going to go absolutely ape and two, I really don't think giving Bonnie shape shifting abilities is a good idea. Love her I may but she's still Bonnie under all that wonderful experience."

"That sounds a lot more cynical than you usually are, Ron," Damien chipped in after a moment of silence.

"Yeah, unfortunately, that's the way of the world. Look, we're here to ensure a chain of events that will make her life hell for the entirety of her teenage years and the fact that she eventually falls for me after years of hatred is probably not enough to make up for that. I just want to be sure, ok? Unless if would cause problems, I'd rather not leave her unattended in this time period."

"Can do," replies Wade.

"Yeah, ok, but you're doing most of the work," is Damien's reply.

"I kind of anticipated that. Meet my assistant," I say as I release that damn hair and Passion takes form beside me. He looks almost exactly like me, save for a look in his eyes that screams that he's dangerous.

"You have got to be kidding me, Ron!" Damien declares, exasperated.

"Ron, I…" begins Wade.

"Don't worry about me," Passion states calmly, "I won't mess this up."

Damien's brow furrows and he shoots vicious daggers at the unrestrained version of me, "How the hell can we trust you after all the crap you've pulled?"

"You think for a moment that I'm gonna untie the same reality that got me quality time with so many Possible women?" he asks with a thick sneer in his voice, then out of the blue his voice drops and becomes clear and sharp, "and what part of "I'm Passion" don't you get? I'm the embodiment of all of his most extreme emotions. Do you have any idea what that means?"

"It means that you're also the part of him that loves us all so damn much, doesn't it," states Bonnie. We all turn to look at her, leaning against the fuel tank in her pleated skirt and that silly cardigan, pulling it close around her to keep out the chill of the night. Passion breaths a strange noise as he smiles and breaks from us, crossing the ground in less than a second, carried on broad strides.

She seems slightly surprised as he sweeps her up into his arms but melts against him as he spins her slowly around, hugging his face close to her neck. I can feel a small tear bleed from my eye in reflection of his. He's once again shown what a complete lack of fear can do; I should have done that myself but something stopped me. I can't think what it is but there was something.

"Ron…Passion…what're you?" she asks quietly as if I couldn't hear her.

"I have to," he breathes, "I couldn't let his fear and indecision ruin all of our good work."

"What's he afraid of?"

"I don't know. You don't understand either, do you?"

"That you have no fear? I got that, I'm just not sure what could scare my Ron."

"He's strong but he's not as strong as you all give him credit. This whole situation has him licked because he thinks that he has no choice over what happens and that scares him. You've got to keep an eye on him and love him because I can't. I hate him because he has hate for me to feel. I can't help that but we need that stupid, arrogant son of a bitch to get this done."

"Don't you dare talk about yourself like that again!" Bonnie cries, slapping him heavily on the shoulder with a dull thump.

"Promise me that you'll love him enough to stop me hating him. Please."

Bonnie stands amazed and looks at me, unable to reconcile the fact that she's holding the part of me that is the fundamental embodiment of my lack of weakness while he's admitting hating himself. Her arms squeeze hold of his frame and I smile as I feel the warmth flood through me. Hugs like that are a rare and precious thing in this world. No impatience, no need to escape, no rubbing or patting to try and hurry the transfer of succour. Eventually, Passion pulls back and looks into her eyes.

"You look beautiful," he whispers as I mouth the same words.

"You're just saying that."

"There's not 'just' about it."

* * *

I consider it a strong testament to the nature of the human spirit that no-one questioned the fact that a sleepy suburban street became one house longer before petering out into the countryside. The thing may have been inscribed with a few characters that were intended to make the thing seem a little less extraordinary than normal but it was even added to a paper delivery route without questions being asked.

As I step out onto the lawn at six A.M. on the third day, I find myself just in time to catch the deftly thrown rolled newspaper as it cannons towards my head. A solid slap fills the air as it meets my palm and I reflect on the absolute quality of the pitching arm on the lad. It takes a few moments to realise why that thought rose to the surface; he's stood on the back of a cheap pickup almost seventy yards down the field.

Since when do sixteen year olds run newsrounds?

I settle a little into my stance and establish my footing a little better. The lad catches a glimpse of me and then looks down to retrieve the next paper on his route. He jumps violently as he realises that I'm stood beside the truck, smiling up at him. To his credit, he doesn't fall off the bed.

"You've got quite an arm on you there, son," I say, smiling.

His dusty grey skin wrinkles as he looks down at me.

"I din't mean nothin' by it, Sir," he replies as though trying to avoid provoking me.

"What d'you mean by that? What's your name, Son?" I ask with a slight crease to my brow.

"They call me Priest, Sir. Some of the other folks in this street don't like the fact that a negro's delivering their news."

"I haven't any issue with that, Son," I reply, trying my damnedest to sound fatherly now that I've realised that I've not disguised myself and look a hell of a lot older than my new alterego. "Where'd you get a name like 'Priest' in the first place anyway?"

"My name's George Holly, Sir, it's a tag I got stuck with. Doesn't help that I'm always a prayin and a hollerin. Sing in the church choir too," he says before pitching another paper, this time onto one of the other perfectly decorated porches along the street.

"'Priest,' I like it. Where'd you get an arm like that anyway?"

"I'm the quarterback at J.P. Geoffreys High, though I'm not sure how much longer that's going to be going on."

"Why's that son? I doubt they can find someone better."

"The school district was talking about combining the school with the white one that serves this town. They don't seem to think that we need separate schools. Personally, I blame that JFK fella," he looks down at me again and smiles, "if the schools combine, well, they ain't gonna want a nigger in the big name position, are they?"

"I don't know if they'll have a choice one they see you throw."

"You're kind, sir, but that isn't the way that things work down here."

"Call me Ron. My sons, Chet and Blake will be going to school around here and I'd like to know who they're in school with."

"Ron, you're dreaming. This is the real world. White and black kids don't go to the same schools. If you want to show them the rough side of town, I'm happy to drag them over there."

"I'll remember that offer, son," I say as I wander back to the house.

* * *

_Author's Note: If anyone noticed a slight inconsistency between the beginning, middle and ends of this chapter, that's probably because it was made by compiling three smaller chapters and my work to bring them together wasn't perfect. Any specific alterations you can suggest would be handy._


End file.
